Briefly...

We watched this yesterday, something I had recorded with my fab new BT Vision. A really interesting programme about Scottish art, presented by the wonderful Peter Capaldi. A did some sketches of me afterwards. I looked like an old lady, so pretty accurate!!

Angles and mushrooms are ongoing at the moment, both going pretty well.

Granny took A to an open day by Out_of_the_Darkness theatre company, with some mini performances and presentations. Very inspiring stuff I think. I've seen some of their performances and they are amazing.
A's new drama class seems to be going well too, she's all fired up for the Christmas show already! I'm really glad she's got an outlet again for her enjoyment of performing, I think this needs to be encouraged and nourished. Cant understand it myself - I can think of nothing worse than getting up on stage in front of loads of people, but what do I know - I'm the weird woman who likes maths ;0)

So, A had her party. I took them all for lunch first at a little cafe down the road. I had mentioned when I booked the table that it was a birthday thing, but hadn't expected them to do anything special, so I was really touched when they brought out a cake with candles once the girls had finished their lunch, and all the waitresses stood round and sang happy birthday! What lovely people.
The party went ok , I think. There was some of the bitchiness that seems so common among girls of this age. I'm sure I was the same at that age (cant remember - it was so long ago) but its horrible to see, they can be quite brutal. But for the most part I think they had fun. Below is a very poor photo of the disco lights.

We finished Chocolat on Monday, and went straight down to the library to get The_Lollipop_Shoes, which is the sequel to Chocolat. A is really enjoying these, despite my very bad pronounciation of all the French words. Apart from all the mouth watering descriptions of the chocolates and sweets, the stories focus on the relationship between a single mother and her daughter, something we can relate to of course.

A has been using the BBC Bitesize numeracy and literacy games, I thought this would make a change from the workbooks for a while. She seems to be enjoying them, although still a bit wary of anything that looks too mathsy.

We also had a look at the projects she has on the go, and she's decided to focus again on her mushroom one, and try to get it completed. She has lots of photos of wild mushrooms that she took last year, and a few books for reference, so is going to fill a scrapbook with the pics and her own notes. I think its important for her to take some of these projects to a conclusion, I know myself - its so easy to get enthusiastic about something, and then leave it half finished when something more interesting comes along. I know she's still learning when this happens, but I think it will give her a sense of achievement to produce a finished piece of work. On a more practical/boring level, I want to build up a file of her work, for my own reference and also to show any LEA bods who might check up on us at any point.

I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed at present. There seems to be so much I need to do. I'm doing a freelance journalism course, with a view to become self-employed in the near future; I'd like to get more organised with HE resources and aims; I need to start preparing if we are going to move. Its that feeling of it all being so chaotic and disorganised, and the amount of time it will take to get it all sorted. I know I need to manage my time better if I am going to be self employed - I need to put the hours in - but all I really want to do is focus on A and give her all of my time that she needs. I think I might start making 'to do' lists on a daily or weekly basis, hopefully this will give me a bit more clarity about what I need to achieve, one step at a time.

Castles, mushrooms and nice tai chi ladies

I meant to post these castle creations a while ago as they are so pretty, but forgot, so here they are now. The first one was something me and A did a few weeks ago on a rainy afternoon. The silver one below is something created by A and my Mum ages ago. They are now up on our shelf together in the living room, and get lots of nice comments from visitors.

A took these pics today. She has developed a real interest in fungi, ever since we looked at a book my friend lent me called 'Food_For_Free' to help us with our foraging. I'm too terrified to try any of the wild mushrooms we find, as there seems to be so many 'bad' ones that look like 'good' ones. I also remember seeing a mushroom 'expert' on a Jamie Oliver programme warning about some highly poisonous mushroom that looks exactly like an edible one - the only way you know the difference (unless you are an expert of course!) is if you eat it and die. Well, that may not have been exactly what he said, but thats what stuck in my mind. Maybe I'm just a sissy! Anyway, A has decided to do a project on fungi and is busy collecting information, so along with the photos she took today, and some she made her Nonna take when she was over there, we got some more books out of the library today. We must have a look at some websites too, I'm sure there'll be some helpful ones out there.

Tai Chi this morning, I was chatting to one of the other women afterwards when she looked at A and said "when is she back at school then?", so I smiled sweetly and replied "well, she's not going back actually, I'm home educating now." She then gave a huge smile and said "Really? Well good for you!" and turning to A said "that will be fun, wont it?". What a lovely response!

A and I had a discussion last night about how we will approach things now, as her old school starts back this Wednesday so it feels like time to get a bit more organised. A wants to keep to a bit of a (flexible) routine, so we decided on 2 hours each weekday morning on English and Maths as a basic plan. I think it might be good to have this as a general rule to motivate us (me!) in the mornings - I am not a morning person! We'll see how this goes, I think there's a sense of security in it for A, because she is used to this sort of routine. At school they had their 'main lesson' for two hours every morning. The rest of the time she'll work on her various projects as and when she feels like it. There are some things we will work on together, for example learning Italian, and others I will just support her in when she needs me to. She expressed a real keeness for spelling tests too (?) so I'll go along with that. Things will change and develop I'm sure, we are still at such an early stage, but it does feel nice to have a little bit of a plan.
Bedtime doesn't seem to be such an issue, she is still staying up very late but is happy to go to her room when I ask her to (usually 9 - 9.30). I'm hoping she'll start actually getting to sleep a bit earlier once we have more happening in the mornings.